Linda Yaccarino, who spent two years as CEO of X under Elon Musk, says the secret to his success is urgency. “The reason his companies are singular in what they deliver is because of the insatiable sense of urgency,” she told Fortune in a story published October 7.
What she said
Yaccarino said there is no deadline for a project or a product at a Musk company: “it’s now.” She added that this forces teams back to basics: “A lot of people talk about first principles, but that’s what it forces you to do.” Fortune ties her comments to what it calls his trillionaire success, which we covered in Elon Musk Is a Trillionaire Again.
Who is saying it
Yaccarino was named CEO of what was then Twitter in 2023 and resigned in July 2025, after what Fortune calls two turbulent years at the helm of X. She now runs eMed, which Fortune describes as a $2 billion health care start-up backed by investors including Tom Brady. Before Musk she spent about 30 years in media, including at NBCUniversal, where Fortune says she oversaw some $13 billion in annual ad revenue. She grew up on Long Island and studied telecommunications at Penn State, according to the same piece. Her advice to young workers pushes the same way: “Comfort is complacency.”
Our take: this is a first-hand account of how Musk runs his companies, and it fits his habit of setting very short timelines, like the one we covered in Musk Says Starship Is 2 to 3 Years From Hourly Launches. It is also one executive’s view. She worked for him for two years and left in July 2025, and Fortune calls her time at X turbulent, so urgency clearly has costs as well as results. The useful reading is the modest one: it explains the speed, not the whole story. Treat it as a description, not a formula.
